still before Christmas

Hi all,

It’s me again. I took a nap and got my second wind. Here are some more pictures.

We went out for happy hours at Departure Lounge. This is at the Macy building downtown, it was renovated and the upper floors were turned into a hotel. It was pretty nice, but the food was just ok at best. It was another Asian inspired place, meh.. So we went to Ping afterward for a 2nd happy hours. We had uegar lamb skewer, Sai oui (chiang mai sausage) and nam prik num, and short ribs marinated in ngoc nam. The food was good in general, but they are all a little off. This is another “white people do ethnic food” place. The lamb was over spiced with cummin. The sausage had a bit too much kaffir lime and was too finely grounded. But all in all, better than Departure lounge.

 

Today we went out to hang out around town. This was right after we got a haircut, there were a bunch of rouge Santas out to go drinking.

 

This is the zoo bomber bikes. Those guys take these bikes up to the zoo and ride down in the dark once a month or something like that.

 

Michelle really likes her haircut. We went to Rudy’s a barber shop in the Pearl. This is in front of Cacoa, I went to get a chocolate bar for Julia, a friend.

 

I like my haircut a lot too.

 

more rowdy santas.

 

ok, signing off. more after Christmas. I’m taking one week off between Christmas and New Year.

before Christmas update

Hi everyone,

Wow, it is almost Christmas. Can you believe another year has passed by? Sorry, I haven’t update the blog since Nik’s wedding. There is not much going on in Portland in Winter time.

I made Nacho from scratch the night before Thanksgiving. It was really good!

Michelle spend the whole morning making Turkey, ranch style potatoes, asparagus risotto, green beans and carrots, and stuffing. She did a great job this year and we opened a bottle of Williamette Valley Pinot Gris to go with the meal.

 

I got a pair of speakers and the box they came in made a perfect fort/scratching post for Lily and Zoey.

 

Director park just opened. It took forever to finish this park, but it looks great. It will be very nice in the summer.

The Portland Christmas tree is up in Pioneer Square. There were a bunch of booths that day selling Christmas stuffs.

 

Pioneer place II, the mall downtown. The Christmas tree here is cool and they had fake snow swirling down. The fake snow looks cool until they touch your head, then they look like what I imagine asbestos to look like – little white threads.

I made Nam Prik Ong one evening. Sticky rice, veggie and Kab Moo. This was really good, Michelle liked it a lot too.

close up.

ok, that’s it for now. I’ll post more pictures in a few days. We went to get congee (joke), get hair cut and hang out downtown today. It’s not as cold now so we can handle going outside.